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THIRTY-­ONE

Outside Cheapdock

North of Makaum Sprawl

0311 Hours Zulu Time

S
age watched the Green Dragon sec guards fill the aisle, confident that their quarry was still running for the jungle. Behind him, Zhoh GhiCemid rushed back toward him, and for a moment the thought crossed his mind that the Phrenorian captain was going to attack him.

Then Zhoh ran to the opposite side of the aisle and took up a position holding his sword and pistol. His lesser hands filled with grenades.

“This is a daring move, Sergeant,” Zhoh said.

“We can't fight a running battle on all fronts,” Sage replied grimly.

“So we hold them here as long as we can, then fall back?”

“Yeah. I've got anti-­personnel munitions set up here.”

“So we will soften them up and then go on the offensive?”

The mention of
we
surprised Sage only for an instant. Zhoh was, after all, experienced in combat. He would appreciate the effort. “If we let them get out of there and surround us, we're dead,” Sage said.

“Agreed. We kill these opponents until we can kill no more or until our ­people are in position.”

“Yes. Good luck, Captain.”

“We do not need luck,” Zhoh said. “In this, we are in our element.” His synthetic voice included a hint of pride and anticipation.

Sage waited till the bashhounds were halfway down the eight-­meter-­length aisle. “Take cover, Captain.”

Zhoh ducked back around the corner of the aisle, his back pressed into the plascrete wall.

Sliding back into cover as well, Sage set off the first claymore. The explosion unleashed a maelstrom of depleted uranium pellets that hammered the bashhounds' armor and broke their approach. The four security lights shining down into the aisle winked out in quick succession and pieces of transplas fell. The feed from Kiwanuka's hardsuit showed she had taken out the sec lights and was setting her sights on the guards racing across the rooftops.

She shot one of the guards through the head and the man spun out of control as his momentum carried him over the edge. His corpse dropped onto the mass of confused bashhounds in the aisle.

Sage popped the two ParaSights from his armor and interfaced their vid links, allowing him to see the combat area from above as well. He set off the second claymore, this one packed with plasma, and hellfire pummeled the bashhounds that had pushed through their dead to resume the fight. The heat slagged their armor and the men inside died screaming.

Zhoh pitched grenades among the survivors and more plasma erupted in smaller pockets.

The advancing line stalled and broke. The bashhounds at the back began to retreat. Another sec guard on top of the storage bay to the left dropped over the side, wounded and flailing like a bird trying to take wing. Zhoh shot the man in the head before he hit the ground, quieting the screams.

Sage set off the remaining two claymores and added to the chaos and death toll. A mound of bodies choked the aisle.

“Sage,” Kiwanuka called.

“On our way.” Sage waved to Zhoh. “Time to go.” He turned and headed toward his team, locating them on the HUD. They had taken cover amid knee-­high brush behind a natural depression that only provided slight cover, but slight cover was better than no cover. Zhoh jogged effortlessly at Sage's side five meters away. Adrenaline pounded at Sage, dumping into his system. He accepted a tranq to level him out, to keep him focused. Too many things were going on around him and maintaining the links to the ParaSights was demanding. The tranq flooded through him, slowing things down and allowing him to be more attentive.

He would never have believed he would ever fight alongside a Phrenorian.

Three crawlers carrying Green Dragon bashhounds roared out of an aisle between storage bays five hundred meters to the east. They flared out into a one-­two formation and streaked for Sage and Zhoh.

Knowing they would never make the holding position with the others, Sage stopped and brought his Roley to his shoulder, cycling a gel-­grenade into the launcher mounted under the assault rifle. He centered on the lead crawler, put the reticule over the driver's head behind the windscreen, and pulled the trigger.

The gel-­grenade sailed true, but the crawler climbed on a small rise and the explosive struck the vehicle's undercarriage. The resulting blast lifted the crawler on its left side and took out the wheels. The crawler returned to the ground but the wrecked wheel assemblies dug into the ground and flipped the vehicle. Swapping ends and turning over, the crawler rolled to a stop and landed on its side.

The crawler behind the lead vehicle swerved to miss the wreck. One of the bashhounds in the back stood on the rear deck behind a squat, ugly weapon that Sage couldn't immediately identify.

“Move!” Zhoh ordered. “Quickly!”

Evidently the Phrenorian captain recognized the weapon because he dove to the side. A heartbeat after Zhoh leaped away, Sage jumped as well, staying low.

A small sun erupted from the mouth of the weapon, struck the ground where Sage and Zhoh had been standing, and left a crater twelve meters wide.

Sage couldn't believe the portable cannon could deliver such destruction. Dirt rained down over his armor and dust clouded the area, wiping away his own field of vision. He brought up the views provided by the ParaSights and got himself situated.

“Top,” Kiwanuka called over the comm.

“Still here.” Sage pushed himself to his feet as the first crawler closed on him. Small arms fire burned through the air around him and bullets ricocheted from his armor. He leveled the Roley and shot the driver through the head with a depleted uranium round, then dodged to the side.

Unable to get completely away, or perhaps the driver yanked the wheel at the last minute in an attempt to save his own life, Sage got hit by the front of the crawler and flew eight meters before crashing into the ground. His senses reeled, but the near-­AI automatically compensated, hitting him with another stimpak that blocked the pain and cleared his mind.

The bashhound holding the cannon fired another round as a bullet struck the side of his head. The HUD tracked the trajectory of the round back to Kiwanuka and Sage saw the group there was under attack as well. The cannon round struck the ground in front of the out-­of-­control crawler, creating a crater that the vehicle dropped into.

Through the ParaSights' view, Sage saw Zhoh standing his ground and firing particle beam blasts into the last crawler's windshield. Holes appeared in the transplas, and one of the blasts killed the bashhound in the passenger seat, but the driver remained hunkered down behind the wheel.

Stepping aside calmly, Zhoh avoided the crawler by centimeters, then flicked his tail out with blinding speed. Sage only just managed to see the tail pierce the thinner armor under the driver's chin. The venom acted immediately, causing the man to scream in agony and reach for his face.

Zhoh and Sage stood for a moment in the roiling dust cloud. The survivors of the second vehicle climbed from the crater. Sage pulled a lethal tangler grenade from his ammo rack and threw it at the men. When it struck the ground, buckyball strands erupted from the grenade, threaded around the bashhounds, then collapsed, pulling through the armor and bodies. The sec guards hit the ground in pieces.

On the run, Zhoh picked up the squat mobile cannon that had landed only a few meters away. The Phrenorian swept the weapon up in his arms and aimed it at the crawler whose driver he'd slain. Demonstrating more than a familiarity with the weapon, Zhoh opened fire and sent a miniature sun streaking for the crawler as the bashhounds struggled to crawl from it.

The plasma charge hammered the crawler and turned it into a glowing pile of radiation and heat. The concussive wave blew Sage off his feet and knocked him back several meters.

You are losing consciousness, Sergeant,
the near-­AI said.
Taking steps now to alleviate stressors. You have no debilitating injuries.

Sage tried to speak, tried to take a breath, then felt the new stimpak soaring through his system, reconnecting all the synapses in an Arctic rush. A headache dawned in the back of his skull and his jaw muscles quivered for a moment. Getting to his feet, he ignored the headache as his jaw unclenched. He still gripped the Roley and he brought it up into the ready position.

Zhoh lay a few meters away. The Phrenorian had been closer to the blast.

“Captain,” Sage said when he approached the Phrenorian. Zhoh lay silent and still. Sage wasn't even sure if the captain was still alive. “Do you require—­”

The sword came up in a blur and the segmented tail tip hurtled toward Sage's faceshield.

6259 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)

Rising up through the blackness that engulfed him, Zhoh felt like he was returning from
lannig.
Then he felt an iron hand gripping his primary arm and his tail tip slamming against something.

Vision returned to him and he saw the Terran sergeant leaning down over him. Memory returned to Zhoh in a flash, ripping away the paralysis that gripped his mind and senses. He had attacked Sage while unconscious, but he couldn't apologize, not even with the truce behind them. He gazed at Sage's faceshield, trying to see the being's features and perhaps guess at what he was thinking.

Knowing the tension between them had to be broken, Zhoh drew a leg between him and Sage and shoved the human from him. From the way the sergeant's body shifted, Zhoh knew Sage had contemplated an attack, but he allowed himself to be disengaged. He held the assault rifle at the ready, but did not point it at Zhoh. However, it would only take a moment to bring it to bear.

Conscious of continued firing going on around him, Zhoh rolled backward and rose to his feet. He held the Vesokan portable plasma cannon in his lesser hands.

Bowing slightly, Zhoh spread his primary arms in a peaceful gesture. “I was not in my right mind.”

“Copy that,” Sage replied, pulling the Roley aside. “I had my bell rung too. Whatever that thing is, it packs a punch.”

“It is very powerful for a single warrior to carry.”

A small aerial vehicle rose out on the tarmac and sailed at them with cannon blazing. The rounds ripped into the surrounding terrain. Four powersuits approached at a run from nearby aisles through the storage buildings.

“We've got to get gone,” Sage said.

Zhoh's mind churned, thinking of the storage bay and of Ellen Hodgkins and of General Rangha. He wasn't sure what had brought the sergeant and his team to the storage bay, but there had been far too much interest shown in the contents of that place. Despite his desire to prove General Rangha as unfit to command the action on Makaum, Zhoh couldn't let the general's complicity in the weapons black market be discovered.

So there was only one thing to be done.

Swinging the Vesokan plasma cannon toward the storage bay, Zhoh fired three times as quickly as he could. The miniature suns burned through the fortified plascrete walls and set off some of the munitions within.

The storage bay became a raging inferno as the ammo contained therein cooked off in quicker and quicker detonations. Some of the debris hit the aerial vehicle and knocked it off course. Before the pilot could recover, the aircraft struck the ground only forty meters from Zhoh and Sage and blew up, showering them in metallic and ceramic fragments.

The explosions continued to spread, throwing fire in all directions. The approaching powersuits held back as chunks of the buildings blew over them.

“Now we go,” Zhoh told Sage.

Together, they ran toward the Terran soldiers and Phrenorian warriors. And as they ran, an idea of how Zhoh could use the Terran sergeant to get to Ellen Hodgkins occurred to him. He knew he would have to be sly, but it could be done.

0311 Hours Zulu Time

With the starport now in flames and still more explosions rocking the area, Sage and his group ran toward the river. The Green Dragon sec teams would cover the two entrances, thinking them the weakest and most logical points for invaders to escape by. And they would cover the aircraft because those would be a temptation for someone needing a quick getaway.

They covered the 1,452 meters to the wall in a short time while running flat out and only met minimal resistance, but the Green Dragons had vectored in on their escape path and knew which way they were headed. Crawlers, powersuits, and aircraft led the chase ahead of the foot soldiers.

“Corporal Dundee,” Sage called over the comm.

“Here, Top, and I see you're bringing a crowd with you.”

“That I am. I hope you're ready for them.”

“Party favors are all assembled. Just give me the word.”

“Drop the wall.” Sage noted that they were 106.7 meters from the barrier, and should have been well out of the blast radius.

Bright orange flames showed through fracture lines that suddenly appeared in the wall. The cracks grew larger and the fire grew brighter. Then the wall fell into a jumble of fragments and the plasma charges died out. There was hardly any sound.

Dundee was an artist with explosives.

Noojin and Jahup led the way through the jungle, skirting flora and fauna that Sage knew he would have never seen.
Strof
, bloodsucking vines with limited intelligence, trembled restlessly from tree branches. Jahup blasted an
oskelo
, a flying snake, while on the run. There were more they narrowly avoided, but Sage didn't have time to identify them.

Detonations lit up the night with fire and thunder behind them. Through the ParaSights' views, Sage saw that the first line of Green Dragon sec had reached the hole in the barrier. The claymores knocked the lead powersuit down, but it recovered quickly.

“Figured on ground troops coming through first,” Dundee admitted, “but I got something for the powersuits coming up next.”